Latent Profiles in the Perception of Knowledge in Emotional Education During Initial Teacher Training: A Retrospective Study of Chilean In-Service Teachers

Emotional education is fundamental in teacher training due to its impact on teacher well-being and student learning. In Chile, initial teacher training has addressed this dimension in a fragmented manner, and little is known about whether in-service teachers exhibit distinct patterns of retrospectively perceived preparation across different domains of emotional education. This study aimed to identify and characterize latent profiles of retrospectively perceived knowledge in emotional education acquired during initial teacher training among Chilean in-service teachers. Using a retrospective design, 412 practicing teachers participated (86.7% female; mean age = 39.2 years; mean teaching experience = 12.6 years). The EEITT Scale assessed perceived knowledge acquired in Mood, Emotional Regulation, Psychosocial Well-being, and Identity. Confirmatory factor analysis supported the predefined four-factor structure, and latent profile analysis was conducted in R by comparing solutions from one to eight profiles. Six profiles were retained, showing a combination of differences in overall perceived preparation and more specific configurations across dimensions. Emotional Regulation emerged as one of the most discriminating dimensions, particularly in profiles characterized by comparatively low perceived preparation in this domain, alone or together with Psychosocial Well-being. The six-profile solution showed adequate classification quality (entropy = 0.824), although classification uncertainty was greater for one intermediate profile. Overall, the findings indicate that teachers do not report a uniform pattern of perceived preparation in emotional education; instead, distinct subgroups differ in both the overall level and configuration of perceived preparation across domains. These results suggest that reliance on sample-level averages may obscure meaningful variation in teachers’ retrospective perceptions of their initial training and may inform future research on differentiated professional development strategies.